NASA’s discovery of water on Mars Billions of years ago, Mars looked more welcoming to life than Earth was at the time. We have seen evidence of ancient lakes and river beds, but nowadays water on the surface of Mars exist almost entirely as ice.

How easy is to navigate through an asteroid field? Do we need to take precautions when we send probes through them? Andrew, Sidney. I’m afraid TV shows and movies have lied to you: asteroid fields are not difficult to navigate. Asteroids tend to be very

The orbit of Jupiter’s moons are all messed up and seemingly overlap. Do they interact much? Greg, U.S. Jupiter has 67 confirmed moons. Of these, 8 are regular satellites with nice prograde motion (they move in agreement with Jupiter rotation). The regular moons are divided

New Horizon has completed the four maneuvers necessary to direct it to its next target. New Horizons is approximately 120 million kilometres beyond Pluto (which it approached on the 14th of July) and 5.08 billion kilometers from Earth. The maneuvers will change New Horizons’ trajectory

The Japanese X-ray satellite SUZAKU has looked at the distribution of gas around the Virgo cluster, a large galaxy cluster close to the Milky Way and the second brightest in X-rays. It discovered that the elements needed to make living organisms, planets and spiced-up stars

Does the specific location of a solar system within a galaxy affect the solar system’s structure? Like does distance from the centre affect how big the star is, or what kind of planets form? Stuart, London Indirectly yes. You have more gas on the outskirts